The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens [ebook offline reader TXT] 📗

Scripture phrases,’ said Ralph, passing quietly by, ‘but I never knew she drank before.’

‘Stop! You don’t come in here,’ said Mr Snawley’s better-half, interposing her person, which was a robust one, in the doorway. ‘You have said more than enough to him on business, before now. I always told him what dealing with you and working out your schemes would come to. It was either you or the schoolmaster—one of you, or the two between you—that got the forged letter done; remember that! That wasn’t his doing, so don’t lay it at his door.’

‘Hold your tongue, you Jezebel,’ said Ralph, looking fearfully round.

‘Ah, I know when to hold my tongue, and when to speak, Mr Nickleby,’ retorted the dame. ‘Take care that other people know when to hold theirs.’

‘You jade,’ said Ralph, ‘if your husband has been idiot enough to trust you with his secrets, keep them; keep them, she-devil that you are!’

‘Not so much his secrets as other people’s secrets, perhaps,’ retorted the woman; ‘not so much his secrets as yours. None of your black looks at me! You’ll want ‘em all, perhaps, for another time. You had better keep ‘em.’

‘Will you,’ said Ralph, suppressing his passion as well as he could, and clutching her tightly by the wrist; ‘will you go to your husband and tell him that I know he is at home, and that I must see him? And will you tell me what it is that you and he mean by this new style of behaviour?’

‘No,’ replied the woman, violently disengaging herself, ‘I’ll do neither.’

‘You set me at defiance, do you?’ said Ralph.

‘Yes,’ was the answer. I do.’

For an instant Ralph had his hand raised, as though he were about to strike her; but, checking himself, and nodding his head and muttering as though to assure her he would not forget this, walked away.

Thence, he went straight to the inn which Mr Squeers frequented, and inquired when he had been there last; in the vague hope that, successful or unsuccessful, he might, by this time, have returned from his mission and be able to assure him that all was safe. But Mr Squeers had not been there for ten days, and all that the people could tell about him was, that he had left his luggage and his bill.

Disturbed by a thousand fears and surmises, and bent upon ascertaining whether Squeers had any suspicion of Snawley, or was, in any way, a party to this altered behaviour, Ralph determined to hazard the extreme step of inquiring for him at the Lambeth lodging, and having an interview with him even there. Bent upon this purpose, and in that mood in which delay is insupportable, he repaired at once to the place; and being, by description, perfectly acquainted with the situation of his room, crept upstairs and knocked gently at the door.

Not one, nor two, nor three, nor yet a dozen knocks, served to convince Ralph, against his wish, that there was nobody inside. He reasoned that he might be asleep; and, listening, almost persuaded himself that he could hear him breathe. Even when he was satisfied that he could not be there, he sat patiently on a broken stair and waited; arguing, that he had gone out upon some slight errand, and must soon return.

Many feet came up the creaking stairs; and the step of some seemed to his listening ear so like that of the man for whom he waited, that Ralph often stood up to be ready to address him when he reached the top; but, one by one, each person turned off into some room short of the place where he was stationed: and at every such disappointment he felt quite chilled and lonely.

At length he felt it was hopeless to remain, and going downstairs again, inquired of one of the lodgers if he knew anything of Mr Squeers’s movements—mentioning that worthy by an assumed name which had been agreed upon between them. By this lodger he was referred to another, and by him to someone else, from whom he learnt, that, late on the previous night, he had gone out hastily with two men, who had shortly afterwards returned for the old woman who lived on the same floor; and that, although the circumstance had attracted the attention of the informant, he had not spoken to them at the time, nor made any inquiry afterwards.

This possessed him with the idea that, perhaps, Peg Sliderskew had been apprehended for the robbery, and that Mr Squeers, being with her at the time, had been apprehended also, on suspicion of being a confederate. If this were so, the fact must be known to Gride; and to Gride’s house he directed his steps; now thoroughly alarmed, and fearful that there were indeed plots afoot, tending to his discomfiture and ruin.

Arrived at the usurer’s house, he found the windows close shut, the dingy blinds drawn down; all was silent, melancholy, and deserted. But this was its usual aspect. He knocked—gently at first—then loud and vigorously. Nobody came. He wrote a few words in pencil on a card, and having thrust it under the door was going away, when a noise above, as though a window-sash were stealthily raised, caught his ear, and looking up he could just discern the face of Gride himself, cautiously peering over the house parapet from the window of the garret. Seeing who was below, he drew it in again; not so quickly, however, but that Ralph let him know he was observed, and called to him to come down.

The call being repeated, Gride looked out again, so cautiously that no part of the old man’s body was visible. The sharp features and white hair appearing alone, above the parapet, looked like a severed head garnishing the wall.

‘Hush!’ he cried. ‘Go away, go away!’

‘Come down,’ said Ralph, beckoning him.

‘Go a—way!’ squeaked Gride, shaking his head in a sort of ecstasy of impatience. ‘Don’t speak to me, don’t knock, don’t call attention to the house, but go away.’

‘I’ll knock, I swear, till I have your neighbours up in arms,’ said Ralph, ‘if you don’t tell me what you mean by lurking there, you whining cur.’

‘I can’t hear what you say—don’t talk to me—it isn’t safe—go away—go away!’ returned Gride.

‘Come down, I say. Will you come down?’ said Ralph fiercely.

‘No—o—o—oo,’ snarled Gride. He drew in his head; and Ralph, left standing in the street, could hear the sash closed, as gently and carefully as it had been opened.

‘How is this,’ said he, ‘that they all fall from me, and shun me like the plague, these men who have licked the dust from my feet? IS my day past, and is this indeed the coming on of night? I’ll know what it means! I will, at any cost. I am firmer and more myself, just now, than I have been these many days.’

Turning from the door, which, in the first transport of his rage, he had meditated battering upon until Gride’s very fears should impel him to open it, he turned his face towards the city, and working his way steadily through the crowd which was pouring from it (it was by this time between five and six o’clock in the afternoon) went straight to the house of business of the brothers Cheeryble, and putting his head into the glass case, found Tim Linkinwater alone.

‘My name’s Nickleby,’ said Ralph.

‘I know it,’ replied Tim, surveying him through his spectacles.

‘Which of your firm was it who called on me this morning?’ demanded Ralph.

‘Mr Charles.’

‘Then, tell Mr Charles I want to see him.’

‘You shall see,’ said Tim, getting off his stool with great agility, ‘you shall see, not only Mr Charles, but Mr Ned likewise.’

Tim stopped, looked steadily and severely at Ralph, nodded his head once, in a curt manner which seemed to say there was a little more behind, and vanished. After a short interval, he returned, and, ushering Ralph into the presence of the two brothers, remained in the room himself.

‘I want to speak to you, who spoke to me this morning,’ said Ralph, pointing out with his finger the man whom he addressed.

‘I have no secrets from my brother Ned, or from Tim Linkinwater,’ observed brother Charles quietly.

‘I have,’ said Ralph.

‘Mr Nickleby, sir,’ said brother Ned, ‘the matter upon which my brother Charles called upon you this morning is one which is already perfectly well known to us three, and to others besides, and must unhappily soon become known to a great many more. He waited upon you, sir, this morning, alone, as a matter of delicacy and consideration. We feel, now, that further delicacy and consideration would be misplaced; and, if we confer together, it must be as we are or not at all.’

‘Well, gentlemen,’ said Ralph with a curl of the lip, ‘talking in riddles would seem to be the peculiar forte of you two, and I suppose your clerk, like a prudent man, has studied the art also with a view to your good graces. Talk in company, gentlemen, in God’s name. I’ll humour you.’

‘Humour!’ cried Tim Linkinwater, suddenly growing very red in the face. ‘He’ll humour us! He’ll humour Cheeryble Brothers! Do you hear that? Do you hear him? DO you hear him say he’ll humour Cheeryble Brothers?’

‘Tim,’ said Charles and Ned together, ‘pray, Tim, pray now, don’t.’

Tim, taking the hint, stifled his indignation as well as he could, and suffered it to escape through his spectacles, with the additional safety-valve of a short hysterical laugh now and then, which seemed to relieve him mightily.

‘As nobody bids me to a seat,’ said Ralph, looking round, ‘I’ll take one, for I am fatigued with walking. And now, if you please, gentlemen, I wish to know—I demand to know; I have the right—what you have to say to me, which justifies such a tone as you have assumed, and that underhand interference in my affairs which, I have reason to suppose, you have been practising. I tell you plainly, gentlemen, that little as I care for the opinion of the world (as the slang goes), I don’t choose to submit quietly to slander and malice. Whether you suffer yourselves to be imposed upon too easily, or wilfully make yourselves parties to it, the result to me is the same. In either case, you can’t expect from a plain man like myself much consideration or forbearance.’

So coolly and deliberately was this said, that nine men out of ten, ignorant of the circumstances, would have supposed Ralph to be really an injured man. There he sat, with folded arms; paler than usual, certainly, and sufficiently ill-favoured, but quite collected—far more so than the brothers or the exasperated Tim—and ready to face out the worst.

‘Very well, sir,’ said brother Charles. ‘Very well. Brother Ned, will you ring the bell?’

‘Charles, my dear fellow! stop one instant,’ returned the other. ‘It will be better for Mr Nickleby and for our object that he should remain silent, if he can, till we have said what we have to say. I wish him to understand that.’

‘Quite right, quite right,’ said brother Charles.

Ralph smiled, but made no reply. The bell was rung; the room-door opened; a man came in, with a halting walk; and, looking round, Ralph’s eyes met those of Newman Noggs. From that moment, his heart began to fail him.

‘This is a good beginning,’ he said bitterly. ‘Oh! this is a good beginning. You are candid, honest, open-hearted, fair-dealing men! I always knew the real worth of such characters as yours! To tamper with a fellow like this, who would sell his soul (if he had one) for drink, and whose every word is a lie. What men are safe if